Commentary
When Stephen Miller first appeared on my radio show as a high school teenager, did I see his potential? I’ve been asked this many times.
Stephen, then a student at California’s Santa Monica High School, contacted my radio show with a complaint. California’s Education Code requires elementary, middle and high schools to conduct “a patriotic ritual,” like citing the Pledge of Allegiance, at the beginning of each school day. Santa Monica High was not doing this. Stephen complained, without success, to his teachers, the principal and administrators.
So, he called my show, cited the Education Code and talked about the value of the pledge as a way of teaching students to understand the principles upon which our “American exceptionalism” was founded. That his school was “blatantly” disregarding this “patriotic obligation,” Stephen argued, does not bode well for the nation. He created a groundswell. People who had graduated from that high school years ago, when the pledge was cited, called the school to complain.
Over the next several years, Stephen appeared on my show 69 times. (He counted them.) He was passionate, funny, intense, articulate and extremely knowledgeable. He dressed like a Wall Street lawyer. He complained bitterly about his school’s use of “A People’s History of the United States” by left-wing historian Howard Zinn. “The book,” Stephen said, “has given a generation a warped sense of history by focusing on America’s dark chapters, as opposed to viewing this nation as a work in progress to become a more perfect union.”
Stephen attended Duke University, when members of the men’s lacrosse team were accused of raping a stripper. While many at Duke pronounced the “privileged” young men guilty, Stephen told my audience the charges were bogus and that the “crusading” prosecutor, who publicly pronounced them guilty, was ignoring exculpatory evidence. The charges were dropped. The prosecutor lost his job and law license and served a day in prison for withholding evidence.
After Duke, Stephen became a staffer for Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions. At the time, I visited Stephen in D.C., where we walked around and Stephen said, “If you could wave a magic wand and eliminate this building, that building and that building, no one would notice. There’s so much stuff going on in this town that is completely pointless.”
Sessions, with Stephen’s advice, became a loud critic of “chain migration,” the potential of limitless immigration through a succession of family memberships. In 2015, Sessions “loaned” Stephen to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Session never got him back.
Stephen has advised Trump on domestic policy, including immigration. Stephen’s influence is such that he has long likely been Trump’s chief of staff in all but name. Now it’s official.
After his first few appearances on my show, Stephen and I became friends. I met Chris, Stephen’s close friend and classmate, who convinced Stephen, then a self-described liberal—like virtually everyone in Santa Monica—to re-think his assumptions. Chris, now a lawyer, laughingly told me, “I created a monster.”
Stephen’s parents told me they, too, were once liberals before Stephen convinced them they were not. Stephen’s father called me his son’s “mentor.” I said, “If you mean politics, that title goes to Chris. But thank you.”
Stephen invited me to speak at his high school, but “negotiations” dragged on for months. The school administration insisted that another speaker must later be invited “to provide balance.”
On the day of my speech, Stephen and I met with the principal. I told her the school permitted a left-wing union leader to speak earlier this semester. “Did you follow up her speech,” I asked, “with a conservative speaker ‘to provide balance’?”
The principal squirmed before reluctantly admitting that, well, no, she did not. Stephen was delighted. “That was beautiful. You nailed her!” he said after we left her office. “This bias has got to stop! It’s hurting the country.”
Stephen saw a career in politics, but not as a politician. He wanted to influence policy, to make sure Americans understand that our republic is not guaranteed.
Did I see that he would become the chief of staff to a president of the United States? No, not quite.
But when this effervescent high school student asked me where I thought he would go in life, I said, “Stephen, to borrow a quote from Oprah Winfrey, your future is so bright it blinds my eyes.”
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
